Thursday, August 30, 2012

Happy almost Labor Day weekend! We have been SO looking forward to this long weekend! I am missing my girls like CRAZY after having been home all summer with them! The beginning of the year is so crazy, busy and I feel like I am not home enough! We are both on our school's Building Leadership Team, which means after school meetings and added tasks to what we already do. We love it, but between those meetings, staff meetings, Professional Development days, and late night and weekends lesson planning and prepping, we are beat and ready for some home time!

To celebrate our long weekend we are having a Labor Day sale in our TPT store and we are also sharing a freebie with you!

Click here to grab the text dependent bookmarks that we are sharing and if you want to visit our tpt store click the link at the top right!

We hope you have a wonderful long weekend with your families and manage to fit in a little rest and relaxation!

Monday, August 27, 2012

Oh. My. Goodness. These little cherubs are already wearing me out! I am officially exhausted and it has only been 8 & 1/2 days. I am using every trick in my book and they don't seem to even care! AAAHHHHHH!!! I have about 5 little darlings who follow me with their eyes everywhere I go waiting for the next directions, and then there are the rest of my 19 darlings. Sweet, sweet, sweet, but they have some STRONG opinions (mainly that they don't need to listen and that the world revolves around them)! I'm working on it, but it is going to take me awhile to convince them that they should let me be the boss applesauce! :)

On a happier note, this group DOES crack me up! 1 hour into the first 1/2 day one of my brand new to the school little girls told me that she was definitely the most popular girl in the room and that she had the most friends of everyone! This same little sweetheart has not remembered to bring back her red daily folder ONCE! Today she told me that she forgot it again, but that it wasn't really a big deal because she was leaving for California on vacation tomorrow and would be gone for a week anyway!

My little friends also spent the better part of 15 minutes chasing a beetle around the room so that they could save it. Nevermind that I told them to leave it, sit down and ignore it, I would get it, I would call the janitor, etc. Nope, I swear they didn't even know I was there!

I also taught a fabulous math lesson, modeled the stink out of it, went through the activity bit by bit, asked for questions, and then sent the kiddos off to complete the activity. Not 2 minutes after that one of my boys came up and asked what he was supposed to do. Grrrrrr!!!!! I very sweetly told him it was a good thing that he had listened so carefully when I explained everything. He started to reply with, "But I didn't..." and quickly stopped, stumped by what to say. He finally just wandered off and asked a friend. I had to leave the room and share with Katie because I could see the wheels turning in his head when I told him that. He wanted to say that he hadn't listened to me one bit, but knew that answer wouldn't sound too good. I really had to work on not laughing out loud!

Who knows what they will tell me tomorrow! But I DO know I will be down one little cherub since this is apparently an awesome time for a vacation! :)

How are your classes?? Do you have any sparkly kiddos who are going to keep you laughing? Or any little friends that are going to give you a run for your money?
:)

Thursday, August 23, 2012

We have been back at school for 3 and a 1/2 days now! It was so fun to see all those smiling faces coming down the hallway on the first 1/2 day.
We both have VERY sweet, but chatty classes this year so far. We are already working on convincing them that actually listening when the teacher is talking is a great skill to develop! I also have a few "sparkly" kiddos who are going to keep me laughing a lot this year!

We wanted to share a few pics of what our classrooms look like this year!

Here is a peek into my classroom...
View of the pod as you come down the hallway.

Class list and student fish outside the door.

Art wall with our Gerald the Giraffe craftivity!

All About Me Board

Blends wall

Calendar Corner

Calendar

Part of my little corner of the room!

Focus Board

﻿

Keys to 2nd Grade...more info to come on what we do with these!

Reading Strategies

Numbers

Writer' Workshop Wall

Here is Katie's room!

Our keychains are one of our favorite things that we do in 2nd grade! We give the kiddos a key ring at the beginning of the year with their name on it. Then we add die cuts or "keys" that we have made, throughout the year. For example, on the first day they got a first day of school keychain. We give them out for bdays, field trips, perfect spelling tests, lost teeth, etc. and at the end of the year the kiddos have a great memory of all their 2nd grade memories!
What do you do for classroom memories??

Saturday, August 11, 2012

It is that time of year again! We are all heading back to school and TPT is having a sale August 12th & 13th to help us pick up all those goodies we have had on our wishlist! I am SO excited. I am lucky that my hubby doesn't read this blog because if he did he might hide my debit card! Hmmmmmm...now that I think about it, I might need to find where that went..... My girls were playing with my wallet yesterday and I think I saw them running around with the contents at one point. Looks like I will be digging through the toy boxes and looking in the couch cushions because there are def some items that I want to get to start the year off with! (Sidenote...While daddy was watching them yesterday they put the tv remote in the dishwasher and he washed it...hopefully my debit card isn't in there!)

We are participating in the TPT sale. All of the items in our store are 20% off PLUS if you use the TPT code B2S12 you can get another 10% off. We linked up with Blog Hoppinto advertise our sale and they had the CUTEST sign, BUT my computer hates me! For some reason it won't let me add pics today and Katie is in the midst of bday party craziness so we can't use her computer to blog right now.
Sooooo...basically I can't show you the cute sale sign, pics of our items, etc....BUT you can check both out by visiting Blog Hoppin for the sign and links to blogs having sales or by heading to our TPT store.

We have been working on lots of new Common Core items to use in our own classrooms and they are also up for sale at our store so check them out if you are interested!!
:)[Glitterfy.com - *Glitter Words*]

Wednesday, August 8, 2012

We are officially back on the school clock! We have been super busy up in our classrooms, which doesn't leave a lot of time for blogging, but it does give us a lot to share!

For our second grade teacher followers, we have a Common Core State Standards checklist for Math. You can download this and use it to keep track of the progress each of your students is making on the CCSS throughout the year. This would be a great addition to their end of year student portfolio, too! Click here for the checklist.

We promise, promise, promise to share more classroom stuff with all of you once life calms down in just a few days!

Monday, August 6, 2012

We are linking up with up with Farley at Oh' Boy 4th Grade for her August Currently Linky. We have one for Katie and one for Lisen! Enjoy!!!

We are also going back to school this week which is a combo of boo hiss, and also excitement over a new year, not sure which is winning right now!! However, we are going to throw a Back to School Salabration in our TPT store! Head on over and check it out!

Saturday, August 4, 2012

Both Katie and I have spent some time up in our classrooms lately. (Katie more so then me!) We are both feeling the pressure of getting everything ready in time, especially since we are changing ALL of our grade level theme items! I have to say though, that my favorite thing in the world about walking into my classroom after the summer is the smell of CLEAN!!!!! It doesn't last long once all my little darlings enter the classroom. Especially after they come in from their first warm weather recess!!!

We also had a request for a some additional clock labels. We finally had a chance to get those done and here they are! Click hereto grab this version. If you missed the first version of the clock labels you can grab them here!

We have also been busy creating some new items! Oddly enough it seems that our work time is limited to after the kiddos are in bed! I did try to work on the computer once and my girls decided to "help" me type! Disaster!!
Here is what we have been up to!Common Core Literacy Centers